The AI Runtime - Boston

Building Crashproof Agents - Alex Poliakov, Head of Customer Solutions, DBOS Inc.

Beyond the problems of accuracy and cost, AI agents are challenged by long-running execution processes, human-in-the-loop approval logic, non-deterministic call paths and upgrade complexity. Nevertheless, agents are expected to perform more important tasks over time, with increasing costs of failure. These challenges can be met with Durable Execution - a set of techniques that originated in transactional processing and now growing in popularity with agent builders. In this talk, we will introduce durable execution and the guarantees it can (and cannot) provide. We'll discuss why and how Durability is becoming a key pattern in AI Agents. Then we'll show how DBOS achieves durability using only Postgres and showcase some advanced maneuvers like queueing, upgrading long-running workflows and forking. The target audience for this talk is software developers with experience in Agentic development or general interest in reliable software. Postgres experience is a plus.

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